Useless
by maryskinner09
Summary: Steve Rogers struggles with how his life is in the aftermath of Endgame (I suck at summaries lol)


I'm sorry. That was all Steve seemed to say the weeks and months following the Snap. A single mother lost her three children.

_I'm sorry for your loss. We're doing everything we can._

Two sisters lost their only brother and both their parents.

_I'm sorry._

Someone lost a niece; parents lost a beloved daughter.

_I'm sorry._

Every time, he was asked the same questions. What will you do about it? Will they come back? Can you fix this? It was constant, at first, all day long. Steve couldn't go anywhere without a hoard of people following him around, drowning him in questions and demanding answers he didn't have.

His only solace was the old Avengers Compound, where he and Natasha stayed. But even there he wasn't completely safe. Tony hadn't come back from space. Most of the Avengers (that were still alive) believed him to be dead. And that was one "I'm sorry" that he could never say. He would never forget the look on Pepper's face when he told her what happened. He didn't bother saying I'm sorry, because it was like slapping a band-aid on a black hole. Completely useless. So he just stood there, letting Pepper fall into his chest and sob her heart out.

When Tony did come back, Steve rushed forward, ready to help, only to be pushed away. He stayed back, until Tony was walking around and then attempted to talk to him. In a few seconds, Steve was reeling from the anger Tony had thrown in his face. He stood there, taking every word as a blow, until Tony collapsed from exhaustion. After that, Steve didn't say much to anyone at all. He kept to himself mostly, only appearing for meetings and then disappearing after them. If anyone noticed, they didn't say anything; there was enough happening that it was pushed aside.

Steve fell back to his old way of coping: beating the hell out of punching bags. Anytime they weren't discussing the Snap, Steve found himself in the gym, punching till his hands were sore and covered in blood. By the end of each session, his eyes were red from crying, tears of anger, frustration, and helplessness. He wasn't doing enough. _He _wasn't enough. Useless.

That word pounded through his brain constantly through the passing weeks that followed Tony's return. _Useless_. A Liar, Tony had called him, shoving a finger into his chest, furious anger in his every word. Steve couldn't pretend that that didn't hurt, that it didn't cut him to the core that Tony thought _he_ was a liar. Steve remembered waiting for a call from Tony for months on end, hoping that he would call. He remembered Tony locking Wanda up, putting a collar on her neck, like some sort of dog.

Anger and hurt burned inside of Steve, but he said nothing. Nothing about how the Accords would never have worked anyway, nothing about how it wasn't his fault that Ultron happened, nothing about how he had done _everything_ he could to keep the Avengers together. The anger inside Steve welled up and stayed there; there was no outlet, nothing Steve could do to rid himself of it.

So he stayed angry. He was angry when they fought Thanos again and won. He was angry when Tony died, heart-broken, but _angry_. He was angry when he was tasked with replacing the stones. Steve was so angry at the new world that he left it behind. He knew it was a mistake, to leave Bucky and Sam, the only people that understood him, who loved him. But he did it. He left them and went back to his own time, went back to Peggy and the 1940s.

And suddenly he wasn't angry anymore. Every morning, he'd wake up to the love of his life and every morning they'd walk into SHIELD together, Steve rooting out Hydra and Peggy saving the world. He'd go to sleep every night, Peggy curled up beside him, and fall asleep, no bad dreams pegging him in the middle of the night. There was always a small part of his mind that said, '_this is wrong'_ and Steve ignored it. There was a little bit of shame and guilt, but eventually that wore away. And Steve lived his life like he would've if the plane had never gone under.

And he was happy.


End file.
